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Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)
June 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Ray Bradbury with a small part of the Rare Books Collection of his works.
The BGSU library “represents all the libraries of the world to me. I’m a child of libraries. I never went to college, but I graduated from the downtown Los Angeles Library at the age of 27.”
In 1982, Ray Bradbury visited the BGSU campus for the formal presentation of a collection of his books and manuscripts to Rare Books and Special Collections. First gathered together by his friend and bibliographer William F. Nolan and added to over the years at BGSU, the collection offers a unique look at the life and work of a writer of truly international stature.
Best-known for such books as Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and The Martian Chronicles (1950), Bradbury was a prolific author of short stories, poetry, screenplays and dramas from the 1940s until his death this year. It was Bradbury’s work which raised the critical opinion of science fiction, taking it from space opera to mainstream literature. While his stories are quintessentially American, he found a world-wide audience as well–his work was translated into 36 languages.
Bradbury continued to produce new work well into his seventies and eighties including: Green Shadows, White Whale (1992) and Farewell Summer (2006).
His stories were about more than flash-and-gadgets–they were about people, about love and the imagination, about death and immortality. Throughout his life and work Bradbury maintained a wide-eyed wonder about the world which spoke to young readers and to the youth in all of us.
For more information about the Ray Bradbury Collection (MS 379), see the finding aid on our website.